why the US has only two major active political parties?

Question

US is such a huge country. Why people only vote for one of the two parties.

Answer 1

easier to control the government that way
it's basically the same as if, pepsi was owned by coke, or mcdonalds was owned by burger king, doesn't matter where you spend your money it's going to the same place.

Answer 2

2 reasons: First, most americans are morons. They have no real interest of understanding of politics. About half get interested every 4 years, then forget until the next presidential elections. They look askance at any political activism, especialy third party groups. (Having met some representatives of third parties on the internet and in person, it's easy to understand why they're dismissed).

Secondly, the structure of our government and has been designed to allow only 2 major parties. Any small party has no chance to acheive powers of position in the committee structure of the house and senate. And, the american people do not have the patience or intelligence to begin a true grass roots party. If the greens or libertarians would focus more energy on state and local offices, they could build a base of support. More importantly, our campaign finance laws give huge benefits to those who can raise large sums of money--meaning the 2 major parties.

Answer 3

You can ususally look at these two parties and find clear distinctions between the candidates. You can see that they both have different plans for our future. The end product is almost always different than that and that's where all the hollering comes from.
There are many other parties but each one has some flavor from the big two and spend most of their effort just saying that the other two are bad and offer no real alternative.

The only thing they can hope to accomplish is to be a spoiler and cause some marginal candidate to get elected by a plurality rather than a majority. In other words, they are a waste of time and a waste of votes.

Answer 4

The framers of the Constitution decided against a parliamentary system - one in which smaller parties could more easily gain representatives and form or participate in coalitions or aliances with larger parties to form a government in which they share some power. In America, each representative is elected in a winner-take-all election, so there is no room for a third party.

When a third party does mount a creadible attempt, it generally 'splits the vote' of one of the major parties, handing victory to the plurality the other major party carries. This has has happened to a greater or lesser degree in several US presidential elections, contributing to the victories of Clinton in '92 and Bush in 2000, most recently. The most notorious example would be the 1912 election in which the 'Bull Moose' Party led by Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican vote, allowing Woodrow Wilson to ascend to presidency with only 42% of the popular vote.

Answer 5

The GOP generally supports, and is supported by, homophobic religionists who want to trash the US Constitution and turn America into a theocracy like Iran. The Democratic Party talks a good game on human rights, but generally falls down on the job. And no, equal rights for LGBT is not a "political party." It is a policy matter that is reflected in the 'platform' upon which candidates run.

Answer 6

Well, they don't.

Have you seen how many parties are represented on the ballot?

But it is true that fundamentally, the US is a two party system. It appears as the practical outcome of the fact that in a race, there is one winner and a bunch of losers. So, in a two party system, there is one winner and one loser. What happens is the fringe parties try to influence the major party which is close to it's view, and then they shift their votes.

But there are recent examples where the emergence of a strong third party candidate has spoiled the election for one of the two major parties.

Ross Perot's campaign for President in 1992 stole many votes that would have otherwise re-elected George Bush (1).

Answer 7

The United States is basically only built for two parties, because of the Electoral College. Each state has votes in the Electoral College. Whatever candidate gets the majority of the votes in the state, gets all of the Electoral votes. This way, a candidate who gets a minority of the votes in a states doesn't even get those votes counted. Put it this way, if you vote for a Independent candidate, but a Democrat candidate gets more votes in your state, your Independent vote no longer is counted.

Answer 8

very simply...

No "3rd party" candidate has a decent chance of winning.

Occasionally (rarely) a "3rd party" candidate has gained a seat in the House or Senate...

When the "Whiggs" (SP?) finally lost enough major elections... the party died out. Same with the Federalist party...

The Republican and Democratic parties both came about from 3rd-party campaigns.

Eventually... when enough people get disgusted enough with the current parties... they will die out.

Hopefully that will be soon.

Answer 9

Unfortunately, a third party only works when you have a side girl making smelly cigars... in the white house, wish a 3rd party would finally work. as I in the game for a 3rd party!

Answer 10

We would be much better served by a Parliamentary form of government. Our two party system doesn't work very well.

Answer 11

i stopped voting for democrats and republicans no matter what the out come of a election. with these two parties nothing will change.it's business as usual. your government has spoken!